Katana Cloud Inventory 2026: Benefits, Features & Pricing

Katana's awesome, full stop. I've been working with manufacturing businesses for years, and for years I've lamented Xero's relatively weak inventory management system. Two years ago I tried literally every MRP app I could find to plugin to Xero; they were all pretty bad. Along comes Katana, which maybe was around earlier but was "new to me" just this year, and ... wow. Mostly, it Just Works. The Xero integration works seamlessly for bills and sales orders, which speeds AP/AR quite a bit. 90% of the tool's value is outside of Xero though, and I now have a permanently-pinned Katana tab in my browser for tracking everything in the production flow from raw materials purchasing, to production, to sale, to reconciliation of remaining materials and product stock. It's great. Is it perfect? Not quite. They need to do some performance work, as load times are often a little sluggish. Also, it would be nice to see finer-grained automation, and better contact syncing. But overall, I'm delighted.

Katana was the goldilocks inventory solution for our manufacturing company. It wasn't too much and it wasn't too little, it was just right. I was able to create our product recipes and input all of our sku's relatively easily and get us onboarded quickly. It allowed us to see shortages earlier and remedy them before they became issues. Saved us time and money.

We were early adopters of Katana MRP, using it as our primary manufacturing resource planning system for over six years. In the beginning, Katana delivered exactly what we needed - solid functionality, reasonable pricing, and an easy-to-use interface that worked well for a small manufacturer like us with modest sales order volume. Initially, the pricing was fair and manageable. But once Katana began taking on outside investment and aggressively scaling, things started to change. Over time, they revamped their pricing model multiple times. At first it was tied to relatively simple metrics like number of users, but later it shifted to limits based on sales order line items, then to sales orders and gross merchandise value (GMV). What sounded sophisticated in their marketing quickly became a huge headache for us: as a small shop selling mostly items around $10 each, our high order count, not our actual revenue, automatically bumped us into higher pricing tiers. So we ended up paying almost the same as companies doing $50 million+ in annual sales, despite using a fraction of the features and resources. We’ve also experienced price changes mid-subscription period without meaningful notice, and being forced into annual negotiations simply to keep our plan. Year after year, it became clear that the company didn’t care about smaller customers anymore: their strategy seems squarely aimed at upmarket customers with big order volume and deep pockets - which pits small manufacturers like us at a disadvantage. Frankly, the model feels punitive, not proportional. If your business sells a lot of small-ticket orders, you get punished with pricing far beyond the value you actually consume - and that’s simply not sustainable for a real small manufacturer. In the end, after dealing with repeated increasing costs and painfully going around in circles with account reps who didn't take the time to understand our business, we pulled the plug and took the time and effort to migrate to a different MRP that met all our requirements. It is faster, easier to use, and roughly ¼ of the cost of Katana’s current pricing. That switch has been night and day for our team - not only financially but also operationally. On the plus side, Katana made it easy for us to export our data and we performed the data migration and cut-over to the new system entirely in-house. Bottom line: Katana may still work for some companies, especially larger, growing SMBs with high-priced items and few orders, but for small manufacturers with many sales orders and modest item prices, their current pricing strategy simply doesn’t make sense anymore.

I tried several different MRPs before settling with Katana. Some were too clunky, others too expensive, complicated and elaborate. I felt a bit like Goldilocks. Katana was just right. Reasonably priced. Integrating with Quickbooks and Shopify was simple and efficient. The set up was fast. I no longer have to duplicate data entry onto multiple systems. This saves me times and I don't lose track of orders or inventory. I especially like the instant chat feature with their customer service reps. I can leave a quick message or screenshot of a problem and within a day or so, I have a response back and my problem resolved. No need to hire an expensive consultant, anyone could set up Katana and run it.

We can easy to get COGS, quickly in make decision for make or buy. Implement is simple and quickly .

Stay away from this software. There are plenty on the market that won't try to rob you.

I tried using Katana twice for my small laboratory which manufacture skincare

Knowing the real numbers of what I have in stock, what I need to order, how much it will cost me, and how much profit I will accrue is essential for making it to next year. In Katana, these figures are easy to find and keep up with. If I have a question, support is quick to respond and helpful. They are a great company to deal with!

I started out paying $128/month for this software in 2019, and that jumped to $388 in 2021. Now in 2024, that price has increased to $399, BUT they took away several features we had become reliant upon and put them into separate "add-on" packages at $199 EACH—bringing my monthly all the way to $797! Something as simple as being able to label a part number with a bin number for easy retrieval was taken out and put into a "warehouse" bundle with other features that we don't use, so now all that work that was put into cataloging our parts has been erased. I was considering keeping these add-ons, but their serial number system doesn't work very well at all. I continually had to reach out to support to get them to fix things, but that often involved a lot of head scratching on their part and then instructing me to basically undo a redo completion of certain tasks to get a desired outcome (which didn't always work). I think these add-ons are overpriced—you can get serial number tracking from Zoho for $80/month, but they expect us to pay $199/month for just an add-on. If their add-on features worked reliably I might have continued paying. I am currently trying other platforms, and I will be ditching this vendor as soon as I am able.